Insidious
by Wildmooncat
Summary: A next generation Dragon Age II AU. This story begins twenty years after Dragon Age II, supposing that Corypheus never awakened. The Templars have instituted martial law, and the mage rebellion continues with growing anti-Templar support. Mallory Hawke, a key figure in the resistance, has been taken captive by Templars. A Templar special interrogator arrives, & old wounds surface.


_Author's note: This story begins twenty years after Dragon Age II, supposing that Corypheus and Solas never awakened. The Templars have instituted martial law, and the mage rebellion continues with growing anti-Templar support._

The freezing rain bled through the walls of my make-shift cell, darkening the stone bricks and ensuring that neither my clothing nor the threadbare linens on my cot were ever completely dry. At night, frost would crystalize around the small window, gradually spreading until late morning when the clouded sun would at last score some small victory against the frost, giving an entry point for the bitter wind of early spring to draft through in bone-aching bites. After three days and nights of the freezing damp disrupting my ability to sleep, I was too exhausted to do anything but shiver in my bed. The only small reprieve were the hot meals the innkeeper brought me. He cast me pitying looks as he silently handed me of the steaming, bland Ferelden stew, while his Templar escort glared daggers at me, hand never leaving the hilt of her sword. Each time, I said thank you, and the innkeeper would smile sadly and nod before leaving.

I wondered if he too was a prisoner here at the Spoiled Princess. The Templars had commandeered his inn when they'd brought me in, barely conscious, three days before. I vaguely remembered the innkeeper arguing that this was a private establishment and they had no right to keep prisoners there, that they should take me to the tower if they wanted to lock me up. They'd tried, of course. My captors had taken me directly to the docks when we'd arrived at Calenhad where we'd boarded a small Jon boat to take to the middle of the lake where the circle tower jutted like a giant spike out of the still waters. Elaine, the smaller and calmer of the two Templars, unchained me from the bench seat while Fist, a sullen, brutish coward, tied the boat to the receiving dock. Elaine urged me forward with a hand on my shoulder. When I neared the bow, Fist grabbed the meat of my upper arm tightly enough to bruise, and pulled me awkwardly out of the boat and onto the dock. I pressed my lips together to avoid crying out and giving him the satisfaction of my pain, instead thanking him in a voice stripped of irony.

Fist steered me toward the gate, Elaine trailing behind. For a moment, my mind drifted from my present conditions to take in the sight of the island prison. Even with the Templars stifling my connection to the Fade, I could tell the veil was thin here. So many mages in one place, not to mention the violent history of the Tower, had worn the barrier between this world and the world of spirits to little more than vellum. It often baffled me that the Templars, concerned as they were about demon possession, never made the connection that gathering hundreds of mages in their Circle prisons created the very condition that made tears in the veil likely to occur by easy accident. I had grown up hearing many stories of this place. My father had lived here, as had my grandfather, before he'd been transferred to the Circle in Kirkwall. Adi's mother had been here too, though not as a captive. The Tower had changed some since those days, taking on more the aspect of a prison than the academy it had once masqueraded as; though, as father told it, the Tower had always been a prison, no matter how they dressed it up. Now the artifice was stripped away. Trebuchets were mounted where once there had been gardens. Great iron gates surrounded the base of the tower now, and the windows on every level had been fitted with bars. Part of me felt an odd closeness to this terrible place, as though it had always been a part of me. This wretched dungeon that had scarred my family for three generations in ways seen and unseen, I was destined to bring it crumbling to the ground.

At the gate, two Templars in full armor greeted us. "We have an apostate prisoner," Elaine said after greetings had been exchanged. "We're leaving her in your charge to await trial."

The guards exchanged uncertain glances. The bigger of the two folded his arm. "We're overcrowded as it is. You can take her to Therinfal Redoubt; they're accepting prisoners in a pinch."

Fist snorted. "You can't be serious. That's another three days' walk, and the road's always flooded this time of year!"

"Can't be helped." The Templar shrugged and jutted out his bottom lip in a stubborn pout. "Knight Commander's orders."

Elaine grasped the bars of the gate that separated us from the other Templars. "She's not just an ordinary bush mage. She's dangerous. She needs to be off the road and in someplace secure."

The slimmer Templar moved close to the bars and squinted at me, tilting his head slowly to the side like a confused mabari. Then, as though suffering a sudden electric shock, he jumped. "Maker's breath!" Slim gasped, stumbling backward. "It's her! From the notices!"

I smiled stiffly. It had taken a while for the Templar portrait artists to really capture my features. When the wanted posters had first started appearing, no one, not ever me, would have guessed that I was Dread Insidious: member of the infamous Broken Circle resistance cell, known apostate and malificar, wanted for conspiracy, murder, piracy, kidnapping, theft, terrorism, and treason. At least that's what the posters said about me. While they'd managed to finally capture the broadness of my jaw, the high bridge of my nose, and the particular shape and depth of my eyes in the portraits, there was still a great deal of misinformation about me in circulation. The name "Dread Insidious" was the Templars' invention, of course, though it had caught on in more sympathetic circles of late. Even Adi had taken to calling me "Sid" as a playful shortening of the moniker.

Slim's companion looked at me blankly, scrunching up his sizeable nose. "Notices?"

"She's one of the Broken Circle, you twit!" Slim hissed with a slight shove.

The big one's eyes widened as his brain made the necessary connections. "The Broken Cir… Are you mad? Bringing her here? You should have gone to Therinfal straight away!"

"Bloody hell," Fist groaned. "We captured her in blighted Red Cliff and barely made it out alive! And now you expect us to keep on the road with her for another three days in this weather? Practically begging for an ambush."

Very likely. Adi would have arrived in Red Cliff and pieced together what had happened to me by now. From there, it wouldn't take much for her to narrow down where they would be taking me. And once she was on our trail, she would move much faster than two tired Templars and a bound prisoner could. She'd catch up before we could reach Therinfal. As it was, I kept expecting her to swoop down out of the sky in a flash of polished steel and spoil everything. But no, not even Adi could have caught up so soon.

The two guards whispered to one another, casting me occasional glances. They didn't have to say they were afraid of me. I could see it in them, the way they shifted uncomfortably in their plate boots at the sight of me, eager to turn us away, to make me somebody else's problem. I tried my best to look harmless, widening my eyes and biting my lips with chattering teeth while my gaze darted about. The freezing weather made it easy to shiver and allow the tears to well up in my eyes. Just a cold, frightened girl. Nothing to be afraid of. I let out a light whimper to add to the effect.

Slim looked at me and frowned. "Are you sure this is her?" he asked, curling his upper lip.

"Positive," Fist said. "She killed one of my men and used his blood to fuel her foul magic."

I whimpered again. "I didn't mean to," I said frantically, in a trembling voice, taking on a higher pitch than I usually speak in. "He attacked me, and I… I… And he was…" I made a show of being overcome by tears. It took very little for me to believably perform grief and regret over the memory of the dead Templar. While killing was necessary in the life I'd been saddled with, I never took pleasure in it the way some of the others did. I killed only when necessary. Otherwise Elaine and Fist would be laid out alongside their deceased comrade.

The larger Templar sucked his ample lower lip into his mouth and chewed on it for a minute before jutting it out again. "If she's a blood mage, all the more reason we can't take her. Like I said, we're overcrowded as it is. Putting any blood mage, let alone one with her reputation, in with the lot we already have… would be like throwing a lit torch in a leaky distillery."

I was counting on as much. But I hadn't banked on the Templars having more sense than confidence. Frustration pulsed behind my eyes as my plans threatened to fall apart.

Elaine shook her head. "No. You need to take her. The Tower is defensible, and the rebels know they can't move against it. If you don't take her, you'll be all but ensuring that she gets away and we get killed for our efforts before we can even reach Therinfal."

Slim sighed. "I'm sorry, but Joxer is right. We can't take her. You should have known to bring her directly to Therinfal from the start."

"That's exactly what her people will expect us to do, you nug fucker!" Fist shouted. "If you can't take her here, at least send a unit with us to Therinfal so we can handle a rebel ambush!"

"We can't spare the people," said Joxer, his own iciness rising to balance Fist's rage.

A vein in Fist's forehead throbbed as he fixed Joxer with his most withering stare. "Bring her back to the boat, Elaine. These worthless cowards wouldn't risk a reprimand even if Andraste herself was making the plea."

I laughed off my disappointment while Elaine fumed and pushed me roughly back toward the boat. The rope that bound me cut into my raw wrists as I stumbled forward, mind racing as I weighed my options. Everything had been going according to plan: my whereabouts leaked to the Templars, my capture, my careful manipulation of my captors so they'd take me exactly where I wanted to be. The Tower had proven difficult to claim for our rebels, surrounded by water as it was, with trebuchets at every dock around Lake Calenhad and the Tower Island. From the vantage of the Tower watch posts, no ship could come close without a signal fire being lit and the invading vessel swiftly set aflame and sunk. The only way to take the Tower was from the inside. My informants had kept me appraised of the population increase. As the inmate numbers increased, the Templars' hold on the mages imprisoned there was precarious. And introducing me—known to enemies and allies alike by the moniker "Insidious" for good reason—to the prison population could be enough to tip the balance of power against the Templars. I'd spent months building plans and backup plans, preparing myself for every imaginable contingency, even failure. Still, seeing my path to my objective crumble so abruptly was a blow. I could almost hear Adi singing "I told you so," already. There was no way she'd let me live this one down.

While Elaine chained me to my seat on the boat, Fist continued speaking to the Templars at the gate. I couldn't hear what they said but I saw Fist's temper rising, as he shook the bars of the gate, towering over the guards as he spoke snarling. They talked for a while in hushed voices until Fist shouted, "Then give her the fucking brand!"

I smirked and shook my head. The Templars, aware of the dwindling support of the populace for their cause, were perpetually paralyzed by the risk of creating martyrs and being leveled with accusations of injustice if they didn't at least make a show of due process. Their reputations would be safer if I disappeared and they covered up the fact that I had ever been caught. However, as one of the Broken Circle, a resistance cell of considerable infamy, I doubted the Templars would pass up the chance to interrogate me.

When Fist stomped back to the boat, his jaw clenched and face red, Elaine sighed and shook her head. "Where to now?" she asked. "It's a long walk to Therinfal Redoubt. And I don't think I can handle another night of sitting up with her."

"Shut it," Fist snapped at her. "We're fine. We're taking her to the tavern by the dock."

"Thanks, but I'm not really much of a drinker," I said with a wink.

Fist gritted his teeth and pretended to ignore me. "They're sending a bird to Therinfal, and we're to wait at the Spoiled Princess for orders."

Elaine shook her head again. Exhaustion had darkened her eyes and slackened her pretty face. Her hold on my magic was also slackening. I'd have a solid chance of making my escape while Fist slept and she stood watch, and Elaine knew it. "Maker help me," she mumbled.

Fist's expression softened briefly as he looked her up and down, assessing the doubt that slumped her shoulders. He rubbed the stubble on his jaw and the muscles of his strained neck. The march to Calenhad and two nights of very little sleep had taken a tax on him too. Fist caught me watching him and sneered. While the trip hadn't been exactly a holiday for me, I'd at least been able to get two full night's sleep while they'd had to take turns guarding me and sleeping, splitting the nights between them. Resentment built on Fist's face as he took up a paddle, pushed off the dock, and began rowing toward the opposite shore, glowering at me all the while.

"It's not like this was my idea, Sir Knight," I said brightly. "I'd _rather_ you each get some rest; you're not the best of company when you're grouchy, you know."

He leaned forward until I could feel his hot, stale breath on my face. "You have no idea," he growled. He lifted the paddle out of the water. Too high. I barely had time to duck my head before the blow came down hard on my shoulder, sending cracking waves of pain down my arm and across my back. For a moment, the thrill of hurting me must have broken his focus; I felt just a breath of release of his vice grip on my magic, and, by instinct, I let out a defensive wave of mana that sent him over the bow and nearly did the same to Elaine who cried out in pain as her back collided with the gunwale. If I hadn't been chained, I might have used the opportunity to make an escape. Instead, I had to sit there waiting for Elaine to help Fist back onto the boat, knowing that there would be a retaliation coming. As Elaine pulled him aboard, his bloodshot eyes and throbbing forehead veins spelled my death.

I cowered, damning myself for losing control like a damned child. "I'm sorry," I said trembling. "It was an accident. Please!"

Fist, unmoved by my pleas, took a handful of my hair close to the scalp and wrenched my neck backward. His lip twitched and nostrils flared as he stared at my face, contempt gathering in his pulsing neck.

"Please," I whimpered again.

Elaine reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Fist," she said softly, anxiety grating under her falsely calm tones. "She needs to be questioned. Don't let her get to you and make you do something you'll regret. You're in control."

Fist's eyelid flickered, and I relaxed some, believing Elaine's words had tamed his bloodlust, just before his grip on my hair tightened, and he slammed my head into the side of the boat. Everything went black.

Things were still hazy when they half-carried me off the boat and into a nearby tavern called the Spoiled Princess. After an argument between Fist and the innkeeper, I was taken to a small room on the top floor, which seemed to be a storage space. Fist and the inn staff carried boxes, furniture, and assorted miscellany out of the room and down the stairs while Elaine cleaned and sewed up the cut Fist's temper tantrum had left on the right side of my head. I spent the remainder of the night slipping in and out of consciousness, too cold and in too much pain to get more than the lightest snatches of sleep.


End file.
